 Political
Corrections
with Margo Kingston
The Power of a Double-Edged Sword
I had a shattering run-in with NSW Premier Bob Carr this week at a press conference to announce sweeping new police powers he wants rushed through parliament in two weeks. He didn’t want to answer the questions I asked, so he accused me, over and over, of having blamed the Bali victims for their own deaths.
Carr expects us to trust his government and his police force – proved to be corrupt and to abuse its power on a routine basis – to do the right thing this time.
He hit out again when I queried his decision to exclude only “lawful” political and industrial protest from the ambit of the new powers. Only last week Police Minister Costa tried to ban a seminar in parliament house on civil disobedience, suggesting protesters against the WTO were violent criminals.
Not far fetched then, to ask whether the new powers would allow Costa to do the same thing again and round up everyone who marched anyway for search and interrogation. Carr blew again.
The third question triggered the most vicious attack. I asked why – since he’d promised to ban corporate sponsorship of politicians he wouldn’t ban developer donations. Really want to clean up politics, Mr Carr, especially in the midst of an ICAC investigation into the way Labor does business on behalf of developers?
The key question for Labor, post-Cunningham, is how to handle the Greens. Carr began being nice again to the force that threatens to split his party and made soothing noises about his commitment to the environment.
This week Labor failed to announce legislation on key preference issues as demanded by the Greens. Put simply, Labor wants to be on broadcaster Alan Jones’ side, not the other one.
Labor has decided that its best chance of retaining power is to join the Jones crowd and play the “bogey man’’ card. Divide your society, crush dissidents.
But he can’t go too far, or the defection of core Labor voters will escalate. Enter double-message games. On the day of the terrorism laws announcement, Carr gave an exclusive interview to The Daily Telegraph in which he promised to target people with “suspicious lifestyles”. On the ABC’s Lateline he played the statesman.
To placate voters in safe Labor seats, Carr has backed down on two attempted asset strips of public land for development – Callan Park, and a cruel plan to gut a successful public housing estate, to build the same number of public housing flats on half the land, and flog off the rest for development.
So Carr’s plan is to make people afraid, very afraid, of the Greens and attend to the needs of voters in safe Labor seats for the first time in living memory, and trust that when push comes to shove, the Greens will preference Labor anyway.
The success of high cynicism as a political strategy depends on keeping the messages separate – thus maintaining Carr’s extraordinary image as a thinking, caring, clean leader a cut above the underlings who play thugs so well.
A press conference means journalists from all outlets. There are grave risks of alienating both constituencies if he can’t avoid questions that show up the contradictions of his rhetoric. His pious general commitment to civil liberties collapsed under questions from ABC TV’s Ben Wilson, which exposed the sheer breadth of the new powers and the room they give for the targeting of inconvenient innocents. When inconsistencies emerge, Carr’s image crumbles. His tactics to crush inconvenient questions, though, displayed the thug in him.
The election campaign has begun. Voters are volatile like never before. Strange alliances between conservatives and lefties on the ground in seats threatens a series of double wedge plays where both groups stand candidates, swap preferences, and hope to knock off the majors by stripping their primary vote. I predict polls will swing all over the place, and that Labor could make several abrupt changes of strategy.
If Carr is right, the Greens will get nothing and face some hard preference choices. If he’s wrong, the only way he’ll win their support is through a very-big ticket policy that Green groups believe is worth it.
If Carr pops up with one of those, you’ll know that Alan Jones can’t deliver him victory, and that a Jones hate campaign against him is worth the risk.
Bob Carr’s government has nothing to offer on policy, vision, or the public interest. It will do whatever it takes to keep power.
Email: mkingston@smh.com.au
Margo's web diary - www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/webdiary/
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